Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, whether his Department has taken steps to implement recommendation 17 of the Bishop of Truro's independent review of his Department's support for persecuted Christians in the period since the publication of the report entitled Assessment of the implementation of recommendations of Bishop of Truro’s independent review of FCDO support for persecuted Christians of 15 April 2022.

We welcome the findings of the Independent Review of our work to take forward the Bishop's recommendations. We will continue to ensure that progress made is embedded and that Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB) is central to our wider human rights work.

Since the Review, we have hosted the International Ministerial conference on FoRB, working with the PM's Special Envoy for FoRB, and announced £500,000 of new funding to support FoRB defenders and to provide legal expertise to countries where FoRB is under pressure.

We continue to work with UN, G7, and other multilateral fora to promote FoRB and Ministers and officials regularly raise specific cases of concern. Ministers do not shy away from challenging those we believe are not meeting their obligations, whether publicly or in private.